


words are worth our lullabies

by sibley (ferns)



Category: DCU, The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Multi, don't ask me to explain timelines, post-Blackest Night, references to murder and suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 13:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17081417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Barry knows ghosts exist.He also knows that not everyone can come back as a ghost.That doesn't stop him from hoping.





	words are worth our lullabies

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for implications of murder and suicide (i.e., how Sue and Ralph canonically died) and mentions of head trauma (how Iris 'died'). Don't ask me to explain the timeline of this, all I know is that it's after Blackest Night.

Barry knows that ghosts exist.

He also knows that not everyone can come back as a ghost.

But that doesn’t stop him from hoping. He can’t  _ let  _ it stop him from hoping.

So every night before he goes to bed, Barry tells them about his day, quietly enough that Iris won’t hear him unless she’s actively trying to. It helps even if he knows he’s almost definitely just talking to himself. He tells them about how proud he is of Wally, how much he loves Iris, how much he misses them, everything.

Barry pretends not to let the silence he’s always answered with bother him. He can’t let it get to him. Ghosts can’t usually speak with the living unless they’re unusually strong. He  _ wants  _ them to be strong, strong enough to talk to him, strong enough to touch him and let him know everything is going to be okay.

It’s selfish, to want them to be ghosts. Ghosts only stick around because something is keeping them there. Ghosts only stick around because they have unfinished business. Ghosts only stick around because their deaths were too violent to allow them to do anything else, to allow them to move on into the great beyond, or whatever else is out there.

Barry knows their deaths qualify them. He knows in any horror movie they would be the spirits that stick around, screaming their pain to anybody who will listen and trying to make people suffer with them. Barry doesn’t think they could ever do that.  _ Would  _ ever do that. But there’s a part of him that remembers those-those  _ things  _ with their faces trying to pull out his heart.

_ “Spill it, Barry! Seeing me, what are you feeling? A little fear? A little hope? Oh! Anger! I  _ like  _ it!”  _ Spoken in a  _ mockery  _ of his voice, a damn near perfect imitation outside of the-the-the  _ darkness  _ of it all, the way the words twisted like they were genuinely making fun of him (because they were) instead of lightheartedly teasing like they should have been. 

He’d only just found out they were gone, too. He’d only just come back, Hal had only just told him-but would it have been easier to see them if he’d had to bear the pain for  _ years  _ on end, the way that other people had? The way that Iris had?

_ If anyone’s tugging on Barry’s heartstrings it’s gonna be me.  _ Isn’t that what he’d said? And he’d been right. Of course Barry felt awful about every death that had happened, both before he’d been gone and after. It didn’t feel right to pick favorites.

Besides, it’s not like the whole League knew. Hal knew, because Hal was-still is-Barry’s best friend. Bruce knew and disapproved, through privately Barry thought that was just because he didn’t like losing his status as the world’s greatest detective to a five foot two inch New Yorker and therefore disliked anything and anybody connected to that. Wally knew, but he hadn’t been on the League at the time.

Outside of them, though… Nobody else, really. Well, Barry had told Iris when he went to the future with her, because it had started after she was gone and he didn’t want to keep that kind of thing away from her. Iris had promised she’d known from the start, somehow, and that she was happy for him. And then Barry died, and stayed that way for a long time, and then he was back, and they were the ones who were gone.

Iris is patient with him. She lets him touch her head just like he used to when they were in the future together, making sure that her skull is intact and pushing out the images of gore leaking out her ears and nose and-he tries so hard not to think about it. Barry tries so hard to focus on the good things about being with her, and there are  _ so  _ many of them, and not on the pain of losing her the first time.

Everyone he loves dies. Everyone he loves leaves him behind. Ironic, almost, that the fastest man alive (well, not quite the fastest, not anymore, not since Wally reached his full potential) is constantly left in the bone dust of his friends and family. The people he loves.

“They’re really gone, aren’t they?” Barry whispers to Iris one night, hugging her as close as he possibly can. She soothes the frantic rapid fire of the electricity under his skin. “They’re really… They’re gone. They could have come back and they didn’t. They’re gone.”

“But I’m still here,” Iris reminds him, not unkindly. She kisses him, and he lets himself relax just a little bit. Yes. Iris is still here. He’s not going to lose her again. He  _ refuses  _ to lose her again. To lose anybody else again. He has to have hope that everything will eventually be okay again.

But Barry still talks to them. He still tells them about his day and how much everybody misses them and how much he wishes that they had come back. And finally he just can’t take it anymore.

“Please,” he says quietly, and he’s surprised by how much his voice cracks, “if you really are listening, can’t you just… Can’t you just show me a sign, please?”

Barry doesn’t know what he’ll do if-when-he gets no response. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to keep listening to the wind. He wonders if Iris is listening from the next room. She didn’t love them like he did, but she loved them too. They were friends. Barry wonders, somewhat impulsively, if now is the time to tell her who voted to let him stay on the League after he killed Eobard Thawne. The first time? The last time? Some time.

The moment drags on longer, and then Barry smells smoke mixed with jasmine perfume.

For a second he worries there’s a fire somewhere in the house, but something keeps him from running, and then he feels the damp press of a weight around his shoulders, like somebody’s just thrown their arms around him after getting out of the shower. Another weight presses into him from behind, warm and comforting and gentle.

Barry closes his eyes and for a heartbeat that lasts not quite long enough he can pretend that they’re still there. He can pretend that he just got back from being the Flash, that Ralph is complaining because if Barry takes down all the criminals then who is there left for him to fight, that Sue is laughing at both of them and telling Barry that Ralph saved some bacon for him and then ate all of it anyway, so-

“You think we’d leave you behind?” Sue says, and he can hear her smile even if he refuses to open his eyes. The weight at his front presses closer and from behind him Barry hears a familiar laugh. “Sorry, Barry. You’re stuck with us for the long haul.”

Barry reaches out and tries to grab her, but his fingers slip through empty air just as he opens his eyes. The pressure around his waist from behind his still there, but when he tries to feel for where Ralph’s hands are supposed to be, where they need to be, there’s nothing there, either. Barry makes a little gasping noise as the pressure fades, and he spins around, feeling for something that’s not there. That’ll never be there again.

Barry falls to his knees on his kitchen floor, which  _ hurts  _ even if he hardly registers it. They’re here, or at least they were, but it’s-they were there. They were with him. They’ve been with him all this time, and he still has Iris, he still has Iris and he’ll never let anything happen to her ever again. Barry makes a choked sound.

He doesn’t look up as Iris comes in and hovers somewhat awkwardly in the kitchen doorway, only to finally rush forward and hug him when he drops his head even lower, mumbling something that doesn’t even make sense to himself about perfume and laughter.

They stay on the floor together for a long time, and Barry can pretend (maybe he doesn’t even have to pretend) that even though they’re gone, there are four people in his kitchen instead of two, and that the warmth he feels doesn’t just come from Iris. He keeps his eyes closed-it’s easier to fake it when you can’t see empty space.

“I’m here, okay?” Iris says softly. Barry nods and grasps her hands. Iris is always there. She’s there for everyone, a finer leader than he could ever be. Wally, Jay, Linda, Hartley,  _ Bart…  _ All of them look to up to her, because they know her and love her and trust her. Just like Barry knows her and loves her and trusts her. She’s there for him, she’s there for everyone, and he’ll be there for her. They all will.

No more missed funerals. No more graves. Barry feels that spark in his chest again. The one he felt when hope itself chose him to be one of its avatars. He can save everyone. He can’t bring back the dead, not yet, but he can save everyone. He’s the Flash. One of the fastest men alive. He can fix everything at Wally’s side. They can save the world together. All of them can.

Barry, Wally, Iris, Hal, Clark, Diana, Zatanna, Dinah, J’onn, the Hawks, even Ollie, and everybody else. They can make sure things turn out better for the next generations than they did for them. No more missed funerals. No more graves. He feels like he did when he was a kid reading Flash comics and deciding to base his hero persona on them back when he’d only just gotten his powers. He’d been so  _ young,  _ and Wally had been even younger…

Eyes still closed, Barry’s world crashes down around him again, and he stifles a sob as he pulls Iris closer. He can’t do this. He can’t do any of this. He’s just one man, and even with the help of all of his friends… They’re heroes, not gods. They can stop fate and time and the universe and the cycle of the Earth itself but they can’t stop death. Not forever. They’ll all be gone eventually.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t still get up off the floor and brush himself off and go to bed with Iris and listen to her heartbeat to make sure she’s still there and wait for tomorrow to come and make everything feel just a little bit better, right? Even if he feels like he’s going to crack in two under the strain of it all.

When Barry opens his eyes, he can still smell jasmine and smoke.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm augustheart on tumblr.


End file.
